Chapters

ACRE China

As an integral part of WP1 within the Climate Science for Service Partnership China, ACRE China is tasked to recover, image and digitise historical daily to sub- daily terrestrial and marine data. Data comes from stations in China and surrounding countries and from the log books of ships in the region. All data is stored in international repositories, including ICOADS, ISTI , GPCC , and the ISPD. As the data is used in reanalyses systems including 20CR, ACRE China scientists conduct verification and applications reanalysis outputs. To date, digitisation work has included 1 . Sub-daily surface air pressure data of 6 stations in eastern China for the periods before 1951 (submitted) 2 . Daily records of surface air pressure, temperature and precipitation of 19 stations in eastern China pre 1951 (submitted soon) 3 . Ancient records of soil moisture (Yuxuefencun) for 6 stations for time periods 1730-1900 (to be submitted) 4 . Digitization of surface air pressure, temperature and precipitation of Beijing station for 1757-1762, and it may be among the earliest weather records of the world (underway) Planned work includes high resolution downscaling of 20CR output over the Chinese region via the Met Office PRECIS team. This would vastly enhance the value of 20CR output for the Chinese climate science community, plus wide ranging climate applications and services, policy makers, planners and environmental managers. Contact: Prof. Guoyu Ren, National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China

ACRE Pacific

The South Western Pacific is a region that is critical for us to examine if we wish to understand how Earth’s climate system works. We can expand our knowledge using historical climate data. New visualization tools can bring these data to life. The extended reanalysis without radiosondes effort (ACRE- facilitated 20th Century Reanalysis Project [20CR]) allows huge data integrations that no one else can do by themselves. It gives everyone global context for local conditions via circulation reconstructions (past climate and weather) to pair with in situ station data, shipboard measurements, and traditional knowledge. The veracity of the 20CR reconstruction is dependent on the temporal and spatial density of observations. We need to contribute by providing more data to ACRE Pacific. We have continued funding of ACRE Pacific via the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) for the future. Contact: Dr Drew Lorrey, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Auckland, New Zealand

ACRE Antarctica

Critical past weather observations are being rescued for the purpose of extending Southern Hemisphere coverage within global reanalyses as far back as possible into the 1800s. Primary work consists of identifying data resources, digital scanning, keying data, quality control, and archiving observations at NIWA. The augmented reanalyses will be used to (i) investigate poorly understood aspects of New Zealand regional climate that are linked to high-latitude atmospheric and oceanic dynamics, (ii) examine daily synoptic type trends, and (iii) establish a baseline more representative of pre-industrial conditions against which current and future climate can be compared. The synoptic type classification completed in (ii) is being binned into multi-decadal intervals according to phases of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. Rescued data are being archived and made publicly available through the International Surface Pressure Databank and NIWA's database. The initiative is funded under the New Zealand Deep South National Science Challenge . Contact: Dr Drew Lorrey, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Auckland, New Zealand

ACRE Canada

Data Rescue: Archives and Weather ACRE Canada is an interdisciplinary team which leads a project to retrieve the information contained in the Montreal based McGill Observatory’s historical weather records. It started with the Canadian Volunteer Data Rescue project 2010-14, where over 500,000 eastern Canadian weather observations from 1780-1870 were digitized by volunteers. DRAW is its second project and focusses on the handwritten McGill weather logbooks. The team is calling on volunteers across the world to help transcribe the tens of thousands of pages of weather observations captured over the last 150 years. The project’s value is two-fold. The weather data contained in the logbooks has the unique capacity to improve our understanding of Montreal’s climate and history. Simultaneously, the knowledge gained through the process of transforming historical information from a paper format to a digital one has invaluable potential for application in other historical contexts. Contact: Dr Vicky Slonosky Department of Geography McGill University, Montreal, Quebec

US Colonial Era Data Study

Exploring Connections between the Past and Today The Colonial Era Data Study is a wide ranging educational based climate change research project. This research combines the areas of history, mathematics/statistics, earth science, computer/data visualization, and global communication. The project is sponsored by groups such as ACRE and the American Philosophical Society and utilizes representatives from NOAA, UK Hadley Centre, university professor, and a museum archivist. It is one of many projects sponsored by ACRE to recover, digitize, and analyze historical weather observations. A second phase of the U.S. CEDS project is actively expanding these concepts with various middle and high schools in a hands-on learning experience. This project presents appealing materials for the development of communication skills and the accrual of important world knowledge. Because of this topic’s interdisciplinary nature, the project can also be particularly effective in various language arts instruction, both for mainstream and ELL students. Contact: Mr John Buchanan, Reinsurance at Insurance Services Office, a Verisk Company, New York, USA

ACRE Meso-America

The Meso-American initiative aims to recover historical weather observations across countries from southern Mexico to Panama including Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize. Contact: Dr Pablo Imbach, CATIE, CATIE 7170, Turrialba- Siquirres 30501 Turrialba , Cartago , Costa Rica

ACRE Arctic

Millions of handwritten weather and ocean observations from 100 years ago have been carefully preserved in ship logbooks. They contain weather and sea ice information which promises an insight into the historical climactic conditions in the Arctic. The Odweather citizen science program transformed the large number of crucial handwritten observations into digital forms that can be assimilated by sparse-input reanalysis systems. The output of these systems extends our baseline knowledge of the Arctic’s historical climate. The Arctic is currently experiencing rapid loss of sea ice and other environmental changes. It’s imperative to know how unusual these events are and whether some part can be explained by the large range of natural variability that is characteristic of the climate system or some other factor. Sorting out and explaining the different regional effects that play out in the Arctic is a difficult problem. Greatly assisting this process, the detailed perspective provided by the logbook data after it is passed through a reanalysis system provides the baseline information necessary to begin to make these kinds of distinctions. Contact: : Dr Kevin Wood, University of Washington, Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans (JISAO), Seattle, USA

ACRE Southeast Asia

The primary goal of this regional foci is to build both capabilities and capacities within Southeast Asian institutions, agencies and National Meteorological Services to improve and extend historical instrumental, documentary and paleo databases of SE Asian weather/climate. The databases will contribute to the generation of high- quality, high-resolution historical weather reconstructions (reanalyses). These new baselines will allow scientists and policy makers across the region to address weather/climate extremes, impacts and risks in ways and over time spans not previously possible. Activities of the project include 1 . Compiling a data inventory of all known data for the region - from ACRE sources or our partners 2 . Awareness raising about ACRE and recovery activities. 3 . Taking part in conferences and workshops 4 . Developing a network of regional multi-disciplinary and academic contacts in humanities and sciences 5 . Research into extreme weather: storms, floods, and typhoons in archival resources 6 . Working on projects to trace particular extreme weather events, or comparative histories of events Contact: Dr Fiona Wiliamson, Research Fellow, Singapore Management University

Indian Ocean Data Rescue

initiative (INDARE)

WMO and partner organizations promote the initiation and implementation of regional and sub-regional climate data initiatives and foster collaborative approaches to work on climate data in an end-to-end approach, including, but not limited to, the recovery, digitization, quality control and homogenisation of the historical climate data. Such initiatives offer also excellent opportunities to use best practices and tools to analyze climate data and generate additional information on climate change and climate risks at national scale and the scale of the region of interest. The INdian Ocean DAta REscue (INDARE) initiative was launched at the first international workshop on the recovery of climate heritage in the Indian Ocean rim countries and islands, 21-24 April Maputo, Mozambique 2014. The participants consisted of several directors of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, international and regional institutions representatives, and national and international climate experts. They agreed to develop an implementation plan of the INDARE initiative. A steering committee was established in consultation with the countries to finalize the implementation plan and develop the working structure and annual work-plans. The steering committee met in Geneva (29 September - 1 October 2014), and adopted the implementation plan and developed the INDARE working structure and work plan for 2014-2015. The 19-20 October 2015 Mauritius meeting (19-20 October 2015) adopted the 2015-2016 work plan. Contact: Mr Omar Baddour, Chief, Data Management Applications Division, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), Geneva, Switzerland

ACRE South Africa

The southern African initiative aims to recover instrumental climate data for the African sub-continent, and also the SW Indian Ocean region. It is also one of three Southern Hemisphere core regions for data rescue under the EU-funded Copernicus C3S Data Rescue Service. Given the important historical replenishment stations at the Cape of Good Hope and others in Madagascar, Mauritius etc, meteorological observations began as early as the 18th century in some places, but usually for only brief periods of time. During the course of the 19th century, colonial stations were established across much of South Africa, and so too, the gradual introduction of meteorological registers. A further valuable source of information is from ship log books, particularly those docked at ports for longer periods of time. ACRE South Africa aims to find as yet unknown or seemingly ‘lost’ records and have these digitized. There are also many known records that require digitization. Work has already started on some of these, such as the long record kept by the Royal Astronomical Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope (now SAAO), which started in the mid- 1830s. Contact: Prof. Stefan Grab, School of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

ACRE Japan

A joint network of Japanese Universities and Institutes aims to expand the understanding of climate change and variability in the Asian monsoon region through the data rescue of instrumental meteorological observations since the 19th century. Digitized meteorological data have been provided to ISPD (The International Surface Pressure Databank) and contributed to the improvement of the 20th century reanalysis dataset. Japan Climate Data Project (JCDP) is one of the active programs under the ACRE-Japan. Target activities are: 1. Data rescue of daily rainfall data in Japan, East, Southeast and South Asian countries back to the late 19th century for Asian monsoon researches. 2 . Data rescue of meteorological data in stations since the 1860s and ship logs sailing along the coastal region of East and Southeast Asia since the 1780s including the tropical cyclone tracks since the 1880s for tropical cyclone researches. 3 . Data rescue of instrumental meteorological data observed in Japan by lighthouses and individual personnel before the official weather station were operated for climate studies in the 19th century. That of former local observatories of the current JMA since the 1880s. 4 . Data rescue of upper air observations in Japan, East, Southeast Asia and Western North Pacific Islands since the 1920s. 5 . Data rescue of civil and military meteorological observations and their history and background during World War II including their historical perspective. 6 . Investigation of early instrumental meteorological observation in Japan deployed by foreign visitors since the 18th century. Contact: Hisayuki Kubota Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University Sapporo, Japan

ACRE Chile

Chile, a long and narrow ribbon of land, with its exceptional natural borders of the arid Atacama desert to the north, extension to the Antarctic ice in the south, the Andes mountain range to the east and the Pacific Ocean in the west, encapsulates most climatic regimes on Earth. In Chile, more than in any other country, meteorological observations are vital to the whole spectrum of national and international interests. Nevertheless, the terrestrial and maritime areas of Chile and the south-east Pacific are one of the least represented areas in terms of historical weather and climate data. Supported by formal agreements between ACRE and agencies of the Chilean Government, a first step has been completed to catalogue the repositories of meteorological and oceanographic data. They cover the full scope from across the offices of the national archives, the naval, oceanographic and meteorological services, and include lighthouse records and British and Spanish logbooks. There is a vast and necessary task for ACRE Chile to address the recovery, imaging and digitisation of it historical weather and climate records, as part of a wider data rescue initiative in South America. Contact: Mariela Vásquez Guzmán

ACRE British and Irish Isles

The UK and Ireland have some of the longest and most detailed weather and other climate-related records anywhere in the world, with high spatial density over land and large archives of ship observations taken across all ocean basins. Millions of pages of observations, from the 18th century onwards, remain in paper archives and require rescue. ACRE British & Irish Isles aims to create a network of researchers to coordinate efforts to catalogue what data is available, scan logbooks, transcribe and quality control the data, before adding it to international archives. The focus is on meteorological observations and related metrics such as tide gauge and auroral observations. The network also includes researchers working on more qualitative data such as crop yields, flooding and drought records, damage from extreme storms and human stories of how weather influenced lives and livelihoods. Contact: Prof Ed Hawkins , Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, United Kingdom

ACRE Oceans

About 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans. Oceans and their interaction with the atmosphere and with land masses are critical to understanding the climate system. Sea temperatures are used to set boundary conditions for atmospheric reanalyses. The most severe weather systems, typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes are generated over the oceans. ACRE-Oceans links other terrestrial ACRE foci, as well as being a focus of activity in its own right. All the other ACRE regional foci have maritime borders. Descriptive marine weather observations can be found as far back as the 16th century, instrumental observations from the 18th century. State archives contain records of their naval forces, including many logbooks. Commercial shipping records are also rich source of data. From the 19th century meteorological services, and scientific institutions began the systematic collection of meteorological, oceanographic and glaciological observations. All these records are sources of historical surface synoptic pressure and wind data, the latter now also a variable to be assimilated into reanalyses. Many records also contain sea-ice data There is far more data in state archives, museums and academic and scientific institutions, than in current digital data depositories, and more sources are being discovered every year. Most recently Norwegian and Finnish archives have been mined for Southern Ocean data, and as a result other significant sources have been found in archives in both countries and throughout Scandinavia. ACRE-OCEANS in conjunction with the NOAA linked RECovery of Logbooks and International Marine data (RECLAIM) Project, identifies sources of marine data (usually with a regional data focus such as the Southern Ocean or Asia/Pacific), and arranges for the records to be imaged and catalogued as the first stage towards making the observations available for scientific study. ACRE- OCEANS works closely with OldWeather and Weather Detective, digitising marine weather observations via citizen science projects linked to ACRE. Contact: Clive Wilkinson , Research Associate, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich United Kingdom.

ACRE Argentina

The Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (UTN), Facultad Regional Buenos Aires, in the city of Buenos Aires will coordinate data rescue activities with other national organisations such as Armada de la República Argentina, Prefectura Naval Argentina, Servicio Meteorológico Nacional, MinCyT and national and provincial archives. Contacts will also be sought with private shipping companies or the institutes of no longer existing companies as well as estancias, historical ship log books and weather records. Various actions will look at: • Logbooks from Argentine ships and ‘stationary’ ships in port • Observations from lighthouses • Digitisation of Buenos Aires observations from the 1820s onwards • Gaps in DWD old German colonial observations between 1903 and 1930 • Observations from old railway companies Argentine Daily Weather Reports (DWRs) from 1902-1980, which are held by the Met Office Archives in the UK, not only contain daily observations of many ECVs for Argentina (e.g. pressure, temperature, winds, relative humidity and precipitation) but also contain similar records for neighbouring countries, and are being scanned and digitised in order to improve historical weather data coverage across Argentina and the wider South American sphere. Research activities looking into climate variability and climate processes will be carried out both with the recovered datasets and with derived historic reanalysis products to characterize the evolution of the climate system in the region. . Contact: Dr Pablo Canziani, Unidad de Investigación y Desarrollo de las Ingenierías, Facultad Regional Buenos Aires, Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Argentina

ACRE Australia

ACRE Australia brings together scientists, historians and volunteers from across Australia working in data rescue and historical climatology. Data have so far been rescued through several citizen science and research initiatives, including Weather Detective , South Eastern Australian Recent Climate History ( SEARCH ), Team Todd , and Team Belfield , with more currently underway. ACRE Australia aims to be a focal point for interdisciplinary discussions and projects on rescuing historical weather, climate and environmental data across the country and its nearby seas. We are also aiming for close collaboration with neighbouring ACRE Chapters and relevant environmental history organisations, to promote a stronger community in the region. For more information on current projects and data sources, visit the ACRE Australia projects list. Contact: Dr. Linden Ashcroft Department of Earth Sciences University of Melbourne